To anyone familiar with Muslim doctrine, Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo’s actions — from refusing to deploy to Afghanistan lest he kill fellow Muslims to plotting a terror attack to kill fellow Americans — make perfect sense and accord well with Islam’s dichotomous doctrine of wala wa bara, often translated as “loyalty and enmity.”

Built atop numerous Koran verses and backed by Sharia, wala requires Muslims to be loyal to fellow Muslims, and explains why Abdo refused to deploy to Muslim nations.

While loyalty may appear admirable, it has a flipside, bara, which requires Muslims to disassociate themselves from non-Muslims — to be disloyal to them (see al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri’s 60 page treatise titled “Loyalty and Enmity” in The Al Qaeda Reader for details).

For example, Koran 5:51 literally warns Muslims against “taking the Jews and Christians as friends and allies … whoever among you takes them for friends and allies, he is surely one of them,” i.e., he becomes an infidel; 58:22 states that true Muslims do not befriend non-Muslims — “even if they be their fathers, sons, brothers, or kin.”

Now consider the progress of Abdo and how his actions reveal great doctrinal consistency:

First, he objected to participating in any war in any Muslim country, claiming “conscientious objector” status:

I don’t believe I can involve myself in an army that wages war against Muslims. I don’t believe I could sleep at night if I take part, in any way, in the killing of a Muslim. … I can’t deploy with my unit to Afghanistan and participate in the war — I can’t both deploy and be a Muslim.

He would not be the first to object to combating fellow Muslims: Major Nidal Hasan, who went on a shooting spree in Fort Hood in 2009, killing thirteen —and who Abdo heroizes — considered himself to be “a Muslim first and an American second”; the idea of deploying to a Muslim nation, his “worst nightmare,” threw him “over the edge.” Then there was Sergeant Hasan Akbar, who killed two American soldiers and wounded fourteen in Kuwait “because he was concerned U.S. troops would kill fellow Muslims in Iraq.”

Next, though Abdo had no problem openly evincing loyalty to Muslims, trusting that tolerant or sentimental Americans would indulge him, he hid his enmity and disloyalty for those same Americans, in accordance to taqiyya— a doctrine that permits Muslims to deceive infidels. In fact, the Koran’s primary justification for deception is in the context of “loyalty and enmity”:

Let believers not take for friends and allies infidels [non-Muslims] instead of believers. Whoever does this shall have no relationship left with Allah — unless you but guard yourselves against them, taking precautions (3:28).

Mainstream Muslim reference Tabari interprets this verse thusly:

Only when you are in their [non-Muslims’] power, fearing for yourselves, are you to demonstrate friendship for them with your tongues, while harboring hostility toward them. But do not join them in the particulars of their infidelities, and do not aid them through any action against a Muslim.

I think ending immigration from Muslim countries would be sufficient. Without immigration, Islam would wither on the vine in the U.S. The smaller its population, the less radical it would become because there would not be the reinforcement of their behavior and views. Also a large number would leave or become non or lesser practicing.

The problem with this is that it’s too late — there are millions of Muslims already in the West.

Even worse, by the time the West gets around to even reasonably thinking about halting Muslim immigration, several years — if not decades — will have passed; meaning millions more Muslims within the West.

Halting immigration 20 years from now (which is a likely time-line for such a development, given the way the West is disposed now to favor Muslims) would inflame the millions of Muslims already within the West and cause more deadly problems.

I.e., the West will be forced to go the route of mass deportation sooner or later — and if we wait longer, the process will be costlier, messier and bloodier, than it will be if we do it sooner.

To be fair, on a particular theological/philosophical level/degree, loyalty to any religion necessarily means a particular level – or at least the potential – of disloyalty to any nation, specifically that in which the practitioner resides.

Faith will and should always trump nations and politics when you look at it from a strict theological and philosophical perspective. Why? Because God is bigger than and outside of man’s creations – nation-states. Obedience to God should always come before obedience to any nation.

Now… that said, when one considers how Jews and Christians are urged to pay a level of obedience to the human government and authorities they live in/under and compare that to what the Quran, Hadith and such say to the Muslim on similar topics of loyalty and obedience, there is a stark difference.

It is no doubt far easier for a Muslim to find disagreement with a nation, and thus reasoning for disloyality than it would be for a Christian, especially considering the differences between Islam and Christianity vis-a-vis dominion and authority.

A nitpick, but one that needs to be pointed out and clarified because it seems a regular meme – that ONLY Muslims can be disloyal to the US or a particular nation.

There are no British muslims, French muslims or American muslims – only muslims in Britain, France, the U.S. etc. Natives of Western nations who convert to islam lose citizenship in my view, for in submitting they have become citizens of the umma and have renounced their nation.

You’re right — many other religions have a kind of “trans-national” attitude, considering their “true home” to be superior to any man-made nation-state.

However, Islam is the only religion with a specific, direct, clear, massively articulated, blueprint for waging war against all polities that do not submit to Allah and his prophet Mohammed — a blueprint massively documented and put into action for 1,400 years, and currently massively promulgated in various forms, whether in mosque sermons, fatwas, public harangues, scholarly exegeses of holy texts, the Internet, radio and TV throughout the Muslim world, cassette tapes disseminated throughout the Muslim world and beyond, as well as various other writings.

P.S.: Indeed, on one level, Jehovah’s Witnesses resemble Muslims in their attitude of feeling “above” any particular nation, considering all nations evil in their rejection of the True God, and hoping for the Last Days, etc.

Because they don’t have a blueprint for such organized systemic violence in the name of their religious vision. If they did, they probably would start being violent. And then I’d be anti-Jehovah’s Witness. But they don’t; so I’m not.